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Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Card Making 101

This is a tutorial on how to create a sunburst-style card, as well as a more masculine one. Both are simple and easy to do (and fun!)

Happy Crafting!

A few things to get you started...a edging stencil, double-sided tape of some kind, cute paper, a self-healing mat. Those are just a few things....the list is in no way comprehensive. You also will need scissors, ribbon, embellishments to decorate your card, cardstock to make the base of your card (or pre-folded cards), and anything else you may want to use. :)Take a card you don't care about (I don't really like these cloudy ones, so I used one of them). Then take a ruler and create lines like so:Then cut the pieces apart so you can trace them.Choose some cute coordinating paper. :)Trace your patterned paper (on the backside so your pencil marks don't show) and cut each piece out....I like to make my patterned paper piece a tiny bit bigger than the tracer piece so it can overlap a little on the card.Now arrange your patterned paper back into the shape of a card.Next, take the card you are going to use and put double-sided tape on it. Make sure you get all the corners and sides. If you prefer, you could put the double-sided tape directly on the back of the patterned paper instead.Now lay your patterned paper on the card and run your fingers over each piece to make sure they are sticking down nice and tight (and smooth). As you can see, the paper is hanging over the edge on parts of the card. Take a scissor and trim it so it's even with the edge of the card.Like so:Lay down the little embellishments you want to use. I used little flowers and letter stickers.To attach the sentiment (ie Congrats), I use these dimensional foam pieces. If you are planning to mail your card, however, you might not want to use these because it makes your card a lot thicker.I used colored brads to attach my flowers. There you go! Card number one is done!Now for a little more of a masculine card (although my husband will argue that it's still not masculine since I use ribbon.) On this card, I started with putting a piece of patterned paper over about 5/6 of it.Then I added a second coordinating patterned paper over the bottom half.Next I added a scalloped edge in another color of paper (I used the edge stencil to trace my scalloped edge.) Also, it's hard to see on this picture, but I cut two little knicks into the fold of the card. This is to insert the ribbon. If you pay attention to the pictures further down, you may be able to see it a bit better.Now find a cute stamp and some matching ink.I like to cut the paper down really close around the word. (Sorry it's a little blurry....my camera had a really hard time with the white paper.)Next I lay it on another piece of paper, tape it down with double-sided tape, and stick it to it.Next, add ribbon, etc. Once again I used dimensional adhesive for my sentiment (and I added it to another piece of dark brown paper to make it a little bigger.)Here, you can see how I cut the knicks in the fold. Also, you can see that on dark cards, you can use white gel pens (or even colored pencils) to write your note on the inside.Tuh-duh! Girlie card, check....boyish card, check!
Enjoy!

If you create a card from this tutorial, comment on my post and post a link to your photos. :)